The Surreal Life: Starring Joe the Plumber

How was your week? It's doubtful that anyone has had a week quite as eventful as Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher or Joe the Plumber. Until this last week, Joe Wurzelbacher was just your ordinary American living and working in the heartland. Then, most surreal week of all time occurred.

Last weekend, Barack Obama visited Joe the Plumber's neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio. He was approached by Senator Obama and the two had this now famous exchange.



This exchange received little media attention until first John McCain and the Barack Obama invoked Joe the Plumber just more than two dozen times. Joe the Plumber became an instant celebrity. Right after the debate he appeared with Katie Couric.

In the next three days, Joe the Plumber became a hero for those on the right and a scourge for those on the left. Newspapers and other media began to vet Joe the Plumber as if he were a candidate. Soon, private parts of his life like his tax situation, his plumbing licensing situation, his divorce, and even his relatives were disclosed to the entire nation.

Meanwhile, those on the right turned Joe the Plumber into a national hero. So much so that there is a movement afoot to draft Joe the Plumber to run for Congress.

He's been a part of two commercials. One uses him positively.



and the other attacks him...



Now, he is scheduled to appear on Fox News with Mike Huckabee. News crews are stationed in front of his home 24/7, and Dick Morris even thinks that he may even wind up being the "game changer" for John McCain.

Finally, John McCain came out swinging. In his feisty, aggressive style, he scored key points on spending and taxes. Coherent in a way that he has not been in previous debates, McCain repeatedly turned Obama’s spending plans against the Democratic candidate. The continued invocation of Joe the Plumber brought a populist edge to the tax issue that it has lacked since Ronald Reagan.

Strategically, every debate is a chance to ratify the issues that will dominate the weeks that follow. McCain and Obama both made taxes and spending the key issues of the future. With Obama opposing a spending freeze and billing it as a hatchet as opposed to a scalpel, McCain was able to push the Democrat into an uncomfortable position.

McCain has now established the tax issue in a way he has not been able to do so far in the contest. Now he can widen the gap between the campaigns on this key issue. If the Republicans concentrate their campaign on the key issue of taxes and abandon the other lines of attack, they can use the lines developed in this debate to do better and better as Election Day nears.

Michael Barone asks a similar question..

Can Joe Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber from Ohio, change the course of this campaign? That's one question that was raised at the third presidential debate. Wurzelbacher is the man who, in a moment caught on YouTube, confronts Barack Obama on his plan to raise taxes on people like him. Obama, sotto voce, replies that he wants to "spread the wealth around." In the third consecutive week in which the headlines of the financial crisis have prompted both candidates to denounce "Wall Street greed," the image of those whom Obama would tax higher was suddenly not an investment banker but a plumber.

...

In three debates, the spin artists go on, Obama has shown that he more than meets the minimal standards for the office, as Ronald Reagan did in the single debate in 1980, and in a year like that one, in which most voters want the in party out, that will be enough. But the 1980 debate was on the Thursday before the election, and the decisive swing came over the weekend. Voters took almost every minute they could. Will they take more time this year, and give some thought to Joe the Plumber?

Like I asked before, how was your week? Has there ever been a week like the one Joe Wurzelbacher has had?